GAS Aligned with WAF

[AlanLichty]

Gadget Acquisition Syndrome aligned with the Wife Acceptance Factor so I grabbed a Mavic 4 Pro this last week Pretty bad timing on my part for weather I could fly in but I did manage to get one trip up the Gorge in along with a nice sunset the other night. Adobe hasn't included support for the camera systems on this drone yet so I had been struggling with color consistency until this weekend until I managed to create some new Digital Color Profiles using color calibration software and color reference cards. Overall I am really happy with the cameras on this drone with much nicer image quality from all three lenses.

This has become my new favorite waterfall camera since I now have the ability to switch the camera over to portrait mode to better fit the subject in settings like the Gorge. The only caveat to portrait orientation lies in the fact that the gimbal has a limited range of vertical movement (10º up and down) so lens selection becomes more a factor. The image I am posting today shows this problem well - a 168mm telephoto shot showing the middle of Dugan Falls in the Gorge. There is no way to aim the gimbal up any farther to shoot the top of these falls at this distance with this lens and I was already close to the maximum legal altitude. In landscape mode the gimbal has a lot more vertical range than my old Mavic 3 Pro and can almost point straight up. Portrait orientation does make some really nice panoramas and I have posted a couple of those with some sunset shots over the past couple of days.

This is a single frame at 168mm uncropped from the original.

C&C always welcome.

 

[Jordan Marsh]

Wife acceptance factor, I like that haha. Photo looks great. Even if you didn't get the exact framing you would have liked, having that vertical option is really nice. The image quality out of that thing looks terrific so I'm looking forward to seeing what else you get with it. I had to hold off on a drone upgrade since I decided to pick up a smart telescope, though I suspect that rabbit hole is going to cost me much more in the long run

 

[AlanLichty]

Wife acceptance factor, I like that haha. Photo looks great. Even if you didn't get the exact framing you would have liked, having that vertical option is really nice. The image quality out of that thing looks terrific so I'm looking forward to seeing what else you get with it. I had to hold off on a drone upgrade since I decided to pick up a smart telescope, though I suspect that rabbit hole is going to cost me much more in the long run

Thanks Jordan - my efforts in the Gorge last week were all about shooting as many images as I could squeeze in with just about every configuration I could just to get a collection of shots to play with before the rains returned to chase me back inside. While i did try the up and down settings on the gimbal when framing this shot I settled on this middle area for a shot with this lens. I did take shots with all three lenses (28mm, 70mm, and the 168mm) from this same viewpoint while I was there.

My drone habit is cheap compared to what you can spend on astrophotography gear......

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Congratulations on the new toy. The portrait orientation is a nice feature for panos.

Where did you buy this from?

 

[AlanLichty]

Congratulations on the new toy. The portrait orientation is a nice feature for panos.

Where did you buy this from?

Thanks Jameel - I really like the extra frame height with the portrait orientation. Getting used to the 3:2 aspect ratio is a bit different at first. Only the 28mm is 3:2 in landscape mode but all three cameras use that in portrait mode.

I got mine through B&H Photo. They have them on sale right now. Not sure where they are getting them from but what they are sending out has the international plug collection instead of just the U.S. plugs.

 

[Jeffrey]

Great to see you followed through with this, as I did the same. Nice imaging!

 

[AlanLichty]

Great to see you followed through with this, as I did the same. Nice imaging!

Thanks Jeffrey - glad I did follow through as the cameras are much nicer than my old Mavic 3 Pro. Did you end up creating your own .DCP files for Lightroom/ACR?

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Did you also get the RC Pro 2? I think the weakest part of Mavic 3 Pro is the 168mm camera. Other than just 12MP, it is also the noisest.

 

[AlanLichty]

Did you also get the RC Pro 2? I think the weakest part of Mavic 3 Pro is the 168mm camera. Other than just 12MP, it is also the noisest.

No - I got the Fly More package with the RC 2. The package with the RC 2 Pro was just out of reach for my piggy bank. The RC 2 Pro would have been nice with the much bigger console screen but I am honestly not missing the extra weight of the RC Pro I have for my M3P.

The 166mm on the Mavic 3 Pro had quite a bit of noise although it was far better than the 162mm on the original Mavic 3. The M4P has 12/50MP options I am still debating. In 12MP mode it's not bad at all. The 50MP mode is interesting in that you can use cropping for added zoom that works fairly well for web resolution images like the sunset over the Vancouver Port I posted yesterday. That one is well short of a 100% crop but has considerably more reach than the straight up 12MP 168mm offers. It's far more detail than I ever got from the 166mm on the M3P. At 100% it pretty much falls apart with noise creeping in and sharpness falling over the edge. That's with DxO PureRAW and NIK Detail Extractor applied - on its own I'll stick with 12MP for most applications.

 

[JimFox]

Congrats Alan! Smart timing on getting this before you can't.

What did you do with your old one? Trade it in?

What I can't figure out is for as smart as DJI is with creating their drones, that they aren't smart enough to realize that all they need to do is create a fake peace prize, give it to Trump, and he would grant permission for that audit to finally be done so DJI can continue to sell drones here.

 

[JimFox]

Wife acceptance factor, I like that haha. Photo looks great. Even if you didn't get the exact framing you would have liked, having that vertical option is really nice. The image quality out of that thing looks terrific so I'm looking forward to seeing what else you get with it. I had to hold off on a drone upgrade since I decided to pick up a smart telescope, though I suspect that rabbit hole is going to cost me much more in the long run

Did I miss this or forget it? Which Smart telescope did you get? And be sure to post photos from it in the Astro section.

 

[AlanLichty]

Congrats Alan! Smart timing on getting this before you can't.

What did you do with your old one? Trade it in?

Thanks Jim - still a bit fuzzy on what happens on Dec. 23rd which is the original date in last year's Defense Budget bill that proposed the ban. It's very likely there will be lawsuits flying about but nothing is for certain. I played the "just in case" card on this one.

At the moment my old Mavic 3 and Mavic 3 Pro drones are sitting on a shelf.

What I can't figure out is for as smart as DJI is with creating their drones, that they aren't smart enough to realize that all they need to do is create a fake peace prize, give it to Trump, and he would grant permission for that audit to finally be done so DJI can continue to sell drones here.

Good one

 

[MonikaC]

WAF.....I have overheard conversations among rock climbers who bought new gear & had to hide it from the wife....... In those cases, the wife should be happy that hubby was buying gear to keep him safe!

In this composition, the most interesting part is the lower 4/5, but the aspect ratio is better with all that you captured. Ah, more toys to play with to "get it right"!

 

[AlanLichty]

WAF.....I have overheard conversations among rock climbers who bought new gear & had to hide it from the wife....... In those cases, the wife should be happy that hubby was buying gear to keep him safe!

In this composition, the most interesting part is the lower 4/5, but the aspect ratio is better with all that you captured. Ah, more toys to play with to "get it right"!

Thanks Monika - good example for WAF. I first encountered the term with high end audio gear where silly amounts of money gets exchanged and the purchase might be a bit intrusive for a well decorated living room My first inclination when I dialed up this lens was to scroll the gimbal up for a view of top of these falls but immediately ran into the Thou Shalt Not Scroll Up limitations of portrait mode. Lessons to learn on the first day of really getting this new toy out to play. For this lens and these falls landscape mode is the obvious choice since you can do something more useful in framing these falls.